Florida A&M University has entered into a significant partnership with Getty Images to undertake a comprehensive five-year archival project that is already yielding unexpected discoveries about the university's own history and the broader African American experience it documents.
The collaboration focuses on digitizing images from FAMU's extensive historical collections, work that has begun to uncover materials that were previously unknown or overlooked. This kind of archival recovery is particularly important for HBCUs, which have long served as repositories of Black history and culture that might otherwise remain fragmented or inaccessible to researchers, students, and the public.
Cassandra Illidge has been instrumental in sharing how the partnership has progressed and what the next phases of the project entail. The work of digitization itself represents a critical preservation effort—converting physical materials into formats that can be accessed, studied, and shared more widely while also protecting originals from further deterioration.
The significance of this project extends beyond simple preservation. When archival materials are digitized and made discoverable, they become tools for scholarship, institutional memory, and community understanding. For FAMU, one of the nation's oldest and most historically significant HBCUs, having its visual history systematically cataloged and made accessible serves multiple purposes: it strengthens the university's own institutional narrative, provides researchers with primary source material, and contributes to the broader historical record of Black achievement and resilience.
The partnership with Getty Images, a major player in image licensing and archival services, brings professional expertise and technological infrastructure to the work. This kind of collaboration between cultural institutions and technology platforms can accelerate the pace of digitization while ensuring that materials are properly cataloged and preserved according to archival standards.
The discovery of previously unknown materials during this process underscores why systematic archival work matters. History is not always neatly organized or immediately visible. It often requires dedicated effort to locate, identify, and contextualize materials that have been stored away, sometimes for decades. What archivists uncover during such projects can reshape our understanding of institutional and community history.
As the project continues through its five-year timeline, watch for announcements about how these digitized materials will be made available to researchers and the public. Many institutions that undertake major digitization projects eventually create online portals or partner with digital humanities platforms to share their collections widely.
Why this matters: FAMU's partnership with Getty Images represents an investment in Black institutional memory at a moment when HBCUs continue to be vital centers of historical documentation and research. When universities like FAMU systematically preserve and digitize their archives, they ensure that the stories, achievements, and struggles of Black communities are not lost to time. These materials become resources for future generations of scholars, students, and community members seeking to understand their own history and heritage.